User talk:AlanBarrett
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If you initiate a discussion on my talk page, I will usually respond here, not on your talk page. Similarly, if I initiate a discussion on your talk page, please respond there, not here. This will help keep each discussion in one place.
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Wrench
Alan, sorry about overwriting your changes to the Wrench page. I concur whole heartedly with your position. Please check and make sure I retreived all of your change. Drover
Alan, in reference to the Wrench page, I moved the image to the Pipe Wrench page in order to give some information for it. I would not be opposed to accomdating it on the old page however. Another thought, I'm thinking of changing the section Common Wrenches to Common Wrenches/Spanners but do not know if Sockets would fall under that section or Other Common Wrenches. Would you have an idea? Drover 21:51, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
at the Opentask .....
Hello, AlanBarrett, I don't understand the codes you've added to the Template:Opentask, but I like the way the frame keeps it neat and tidy. Thank you. I've widened it a little bit (I think that all I've done) so that the lines don't get truncated. May I ask how you decide on the dimensions ? I hope the template is not too wide now. -- PFHLai 21:59, 2004 Aug 28 (UTC)
- See my reply at Template talk:Opentask. —AlanBarrett 10:07, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Tables
Thanks for the help on the tables on the Military of the United Kingdom. To further demonstrate my lack of understanding of tables, I found this <></>> in Palme d'Or but can not figure out what is causing it. Any ideas? Rmhermen 03:40, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)
- Fixed. There was a "|-''" instead of "|-" between 1955 and 1956. However, my browser damaged the non-ascii characters in 1946; can you fix that? —AlanBarrett 09:07, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Thanks and fixed. Rmhermen 13:03, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)
Template section numbering now screws up TOC
Please see my followup comment at Wikipedia talk:How to edit a page#New approach to section headings example. - dcljr 17:55, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
aggressive edit summary
"Reinstate alt="" which was recently removed by Netoholic. Please do not hide changes like this under a misleading edit summary like "formatting".)"
Its usually considered bad form to say something so accusatory. You may disagree with the changes, you may even revert them, but edit summaries go into the permanent record of the article history. Use the edit summary to describe your changes, and use Talk page for your justification and commentary directed to a specific editor. Take a read of Wikipedia:Edit summary if you think this isn't a community standard. -- Netoholic @ 20:11, 2004 Oct 30 (UTC)
- I do think your edit summary at Template:Wikiquote was misleading, because you did not simply change the formatting. For short once-off complaints, it's much more convenient to use the edit summary than anything else. As soon as I realised it was not a once-off thing, I commented on your user page. —AlanBarrett 20:29, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- Note that I did not say (or think) that your edit summary was deliberately misleading, just that it was misleading, and I wished you would describe your changes better. Sorry if you took it as an accusation. —AlanBarrett 20:38, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
vim
Hi Alan, thanks for the tip on global search and replace! I was wondering how to do that... which is why I used that dodgy macro hack to fixup wikilinks. I'll use that command in future - much easier! Maybe I should use sed... hmmm. Don't know if I can be bothered. - Ta bu shi da yu 12:17, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
imatinib
Hi Alan, the purpose of the <br> tags is mainly for Gecko-based browser (Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape, Camino, etc) which, for some reason, don't seem to break at hyphens in any of the longer IUPAC names I've entered into Wikipedia drug infoboxes; so the drugbox can sometimes become wider than the entire screen. Gecko-based browsers do break at spaces, though, which is why I had those spaces in the name - but the <br> solution probably looks more accurate to more people. It seems to work out okay this way for Internet Explorer, but it does look a bit strange in Safari - probably just needs a bit of tweaking with regards to where the linebreak is placed. I haven't had a chance to test it out in Opera yet unfortunately. Techelf 13:09, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- See my response at User talk:Techelf. —AlanBarrett 16:01, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/GeneralPatton
Hello Sir, you wrote: "Oppose. Does not make proper use of edit summaries. —AlanBarrett 16:59, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)"
- I really can't see how can that affect my performance as an administrator as I primarily focus on CONTENT and regularly talk the things through on talk. If you want an example you can take a look at my Erich von Manstein article that is now a FA, Battle of the Bulge article also a FA, or the David Irving article. As an administrator I can assure you I will do my choirs by the book. GeneralPatton 18:56, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- "By the book" includes making proper use of edit summaries to describe your changes and the reasons for them. If you can't do it now, I don't expect you to magically improve if you become an admin. —AlanBarrett 19:07, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Sir, do you really think that one thing is more important than contributions to articles? I mostly focus on adding actual content, but I can assure you I’d certainly describe all my actions as an administrator and voluntarily resign if I failed to do so. In fact, I can promise you to start adding editing summary to everything I do, if you want me to. I always respond to input and suggestions by other users, I just never saw this as a major issue until now. In fact, if you give me your vote, and I fail to make one single editing summary on any content I add, I'd also voluntarily resign. GeneralPatton 23:24, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Good edit summaries make it much easier for people who watch the Special:Recent changes page, or people who have articles on their watchlist, to see why you made a change. If I agree with the change that you describe in your edit summary, and if I trust you not to write misleading edit summaries, then I can save the time that it would otherwise have taken for me to check your work by viewing the diff. Checking people's work is an important part of quality control (which is much more than just checking for vandalism), and editors should strive to make it easy for others to check their work.
- Good edit summaries also make it much easier for people in the future to research how a page changed over time. For example, I recently wanted to find out when a date was changed in the Che Guevara article. If the person who changed the date had said "changed date of birth" in the edit summary, my work would have been easy; instead, I had to view many diffs between different versions until I found the one I wanted.
- Thank you for promising to start using edit summaries. I will consider changing my vote after a few days.
- —AlanBarrett 07:26, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Thank you sir for you time and discussing this with me. I will try to do my best. GeneralPatton 23:33, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The Humungous Image Tagging Project
Hi. You've helped with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax, so I thought it worth alerting you to the latest and greatest of Wikipedia fixing project, User:Yann/Untagged Images, which is seeking to put copyright tags on all of the untagged images. There are probably, oh, thirty thousand or so to do (he said, reaching into the air for a large figure). But hey: they're images ... you'll get to see lots of random pretty pictures. That must be better than looking for at at and the the, non? You know you'll love it. best wishes --Tagishsimon (talk)
- We'll have to agree to differ on that. --Tagishsimon (talk)
Wiktionary
Oooh, thanks for the pointer. Noel (talk) 01:27, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Template:Stub
Hi AlanBarrett, Template:Stub has been unprotected as per your request on WP:RFPP. Please make any edits to it that you want to now. Regards, silsor 01:02, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
- I have tried many times. I seem to be able to edit other articles, but whenever I edit Template:stub, I get an error. Database errors from the Wikipedia PHP scripts, "Sorry we have a problem" errors from the Wikipedia squids, timeouts from local web cache at my side, etc. I have tried at least 20 times (probably more like 50 times) over the past 3 days. All I need to do is change the ugly alt="Wiki letter w" to alt=" ". —AlanBarrett 13:05, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- Yay! 17 days and several hundred attempts later, Wikipedia has finally allowed me to edit the page. I hope that this is an indication that the servers are no longer quite so overloaded. —AlanBarrett 06:48, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Blocks
I know of no way to block an anon and let others who use the proxy to edit. The user was repeatedly vandalizing last night. I'll check to see if the block is still there, and if it is, I'll unblock it. RickK 20:36, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks. I wasn't sure whether it was possible or not. —AlanBarrett/talk 21:07, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- Alan, I'm sorry you got caught in the crossfire. For your information there was no vandalism from this IP. I was simply removing some of the old messages in my own talk page. With all the old messages it often confuses newbies when they see a lot of old messages that are not directed at them personally. 168.209.97.34 08:16, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Alt tags on metapicstub
You removed the {{{alt}}} tag with this edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AMetaPicstub&diff=9444829&oldid=9201210). Could you direct me to the pages on which you found the problem and we can fix the alt text to something more suitable: I don't like having blank tooltips pop up, and I don't think it makes Wikipedia more usable. --Phil | Talk 08:36, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
- For example, Template:Bio-stub used to say "David's face This biographical article is a stub" (when viewed in a text browser), and that isn't even a proper sentence. The guideline is: If an image has a caption, then choose a good caption, and don't worry about bad alt text or bad title text; else choose good alt text, and don't worry about bad title text. See Wikipedia:Alternative_text_for_images#Conflict_between_caption_and_alt_text and en:Wikipedia_talk:Extended_image_syntax#Alt.2C_title.2C_and_caption_text_in_extended_markup. The real problem is that there's only one place in the image syntax to specify what should be three different things: a caption (displayed below the image), alt text (displayed by text browsers instead of the image), and a title (displayed as a tooltip by many graphical browsers). You just can't get good tooltips without getting bad alt text, and the alt text is more important for accessibility, so the tooltips suffer. There is a feature request on file asking for the three things to be individually controllable. —AlanBarrett 17:30, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- The above comment has been copied to Template talk:MetaPicstub. Further discussion should probably go there. —AlanBarrett 19:34, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Cantus
I noticed your comments on the talk page of Cantus's new Wikipedia:Images unsuitable for inline display. I'd also appreciate if you could look at my Template deletion proposal for his template:offensiveimage which he's been trying out lately on one or two articles.
The discussion is here.
--Tony Sidaway|Talk 19:11, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
meta:Www.wikipedia.org portal/Catherine
Hi. I just reverted your last edit on the page, since it messed up all the foreign characters. Not sure if this is on my computer only, but i just rolled it back to the last version, which works fine. Please check and if necessary re-introduce the modification you wanted to do. -- Chris 73 Talk 00:26, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
- Thank you. I left a note on the talk page asking for somebody to revert, because I was using a browser that messed up some of the non-ascii characters. —AlanBarrett 08:40, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I have now unprotected the pages meta:Www.wikipedia.org template and meta:Www.wikipedia.org portal so you can work on it if you like to do. I am garding those pages. I am now online whit Jabber; walter@jabber.belnet.be , ICQ 85153582, MSN wvermeir@hotmail.com and IRC freenode user "WalterBE" in #Meta if i need to do something. --Walter 19:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Sandbot and moved pages
What does Sandbot do if one of the pages it wants to clean has been moved? Does it follow the redirect and edit the new target page, or does it edit the redirect page itself, or does it give up and report an error? Wikipedia:Sandbox was moved to Creep (Radiohead) today, and I wondered what Sandbot would do I think that reporting an error would be best. —AlanBarrett 07:43, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- It doesn't care. It would forcibly replace the sandbox heading anyway. Although dealing with the history is something else. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:05, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Unwise arbcom policy change
I did not write those proposed amendments to the policy. I strongly oppose them as they are written. If you are aware of anyone else who thinks I wrote them, please correct them and note to them that I strongly oppose them.
I did note that there was merit in splitting personal and official capacity. However, I oppose all four of the proposals which make the arbcom follow the directions of and report to the Foundation instead of this community. It's a massive and, IMO, very unwise change. Jamesday 13:18, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)